McKnight took another sip of coffee and glanced, once again, at his notes, but he’d hardly written anything, just a few scribbles I couldn’t make out. Parker was completely silent. McKnight looked to her and back to me. ‘Yes, I know what you told Officer Parker and the DEC rangers,’ he said. ‘I’ve read the preliminary report. But I’d like to hear it all again, perhaps in a bit more detail.’

‘Do you want me to describe the colors of the leaves or something?’

They both stared.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Yesterday was horrible, and now you’re asking me to relive it. I just, I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘It’s okay,’ Parker said. ‘It’s an awful thing, what happened. What you and Ms Abernathy had to go through.’

‘It is,’ McKnight picked up. He scratched at his chin, at an indentation that had probably been a cystic bit of acne when he was a teenager and was now a scar that would never go away. ‘I guess what I’m trying to figure out is, you feel confident in what you saw?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you didn’t see his body down in the river when you peered over.’

‘No,’ I said, confidence surging at our carefully made-up story. ‘It’s about fifty feet from the edge of the clearing. I ran, but still, by the time I got there, I couldn’t see anything but the water. It was so drizzly, it was hard to see anyway.’

‘I see,’ McKnight said, making another note. Then his eyes caught mine. ‘So why was Mr Nolan taking photos, if the visibility was so awful?’

I sighed. I was on solid ground – John had told me what to say for this bit. ‘The diffused light is actually really good for photos. As long as you don’t get water on the lens, light rain can be a great condition for shooting.’

McKnight smiled. ‘Hey, I’m not a photographer – had to ask.’

I sagged against the sofa as I felt a lightness rise in my stomach. He believed me.

‘So,’ McKnight said. ‘Just to be clear. Since it was drizzly and it was fifty feet away, like you said, you definitely saw Mr Nolan slip? There’s no way you could have heard a scream but not seen anything, found the backpack and the water bottle and put two and two together?’

‘No,’ I said, without hesitation. ‘I’m sure.’

He exchanged a look with Parker. Then he gave me a half smile, almost a smirk. ‘I know you think I’m probably being a stickler about this, but I like to get the facts straight.’

‘Of course.’

‘And sometimes it’s easy to get something mixed up. Especially since, like you said, it was raining. It was stressful. A lot was going on. It happened so fast. But you saw him? You actually saw him fall?’

‘Yes.’